Google Books Ngram Viewer

From The New York Times:

In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture

A Google-backed project allows the frequency of specific words and phrases to be tracked in centuries of books, equipping the humanities with a new method of cultural analysis.

http://nyti.ms/eMacup

Risorse per studenti

Se sei uno studente di filosofia alle prime armi o, più semplicemente, una persona curiosa che vuole sapere come funziona la filosofia contemporanea, dai un occhio qui.

Troverai delle brevi descrizioni dei settori centrali della filosofia (logica; metafisica; filosofia del linguaggio; epistemologia; etica; ecc.), con annesse delle bibliografie molto utili. Inoltre, troverai dei consigli su come scrivere e leggere un paper di filosofia.

Seminario a Milano

Venerdì 10 dicembre, ore 15:30 Aula Seminari del Dipartimento di Filosofia (3° piano) Università degli Studi di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7

Juha Räikkä (University of Turku, Finland)
On forgiveness

I will consider the question why demands for forgiveness sound typically if not always incongruous and disturbing. When an offender demands forgiveness, he does not merely ask or beg that the victim would consider once again the excuses and explanations he has offered. Instead, he blames the victim.

Forgiveness can refer to a variety of things. The understanding of forgiveness adopted in my presentation is closely related to Joseph Butler’s (1692-1752) classical definition, based on the idea that forgiveness is connected to moderation of resentment. For the purposes of my argument it is enough to assume that when a victim forgives the offender, she typically makes a commitment to work toward a frame of mind in which resentment has gone. When a victim has made a commitment, she personally thinks that resentment is not an appropriate emotion anymore – whether or not she still feels it. A victim has not forgiven if she feels resentment and thinks that her feelings are appropriate in this respect.

It seems clear that in some circumstances it would be cruel not to forgive the offender, i.e. if the crime committed was not serious and happened a long time ago, if the offender has felt remorse because of it and explained why he was so stupid to have done it, and so on. But if this is so, then it seems to follow that in some circumstances demands for forgiveness may be perfectly acceptable and morally unproblematic. Surely we are free to demand not to be treated cruelly and wrongly. We can blame those who treat us so.

I aim to explain why demands for forgiveness sound typically incongruous and disturbing. I will introduce two explanations that have been defended, and criticize both of them. I will then present my own explanation and argue that it satisfies all the main conditions which the acceptable explanation should meet. The conditions I have in mind are the following. (1) The explanation should tell us why demands for forgiveness are morally and not merely practically incongruous. (2) The explanation should clarify why such demands are typically but not always morally incongruous. (3) The explanation should explain why demands presented by offenders are typically more disturbing than demands presented by third parties.

Job Vacancies at ILLC

(New) 3 open PhD positions at ILLC

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation has two four-year PhD positions available at the Faculty of Humanities (FGw) and one at the Faculty of Science (FNWI) starting September 2011.

Deadline for project proposal submissions is 15 March 2011 (for the FNWI position) or February 1, 2011 (for the FGw positions). Candidates who wish to be considered for all three positions should follow the FGw deadline. For more information, see the full joboffer announcement or the project proposal guidelines (PDF), or contact the ILLC's scientific director, Dr. Leen Torenvliet, at L.Torenvlietuva.nl.

Lo scrittore e il giudice

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) dà consigli su come scrivere un articolo e su come referarlo. Lo fai qui.

Conferenza Logica e Filosofia delle Scienze

Dal 15 al 17 dicembre 2010, si terrà a Bergamo la conferenza della Società Italiana di Logica e Filosofia delle Scienze. Gli invited speakers sono:

Samson Abramsky, Wolfson College - Oxford
Amit Hagar, Indiana University
Peter Janich, Philipps Universitaet - Marburg
Samir Okasha, University of Bristol
Stathis Psillos, University of Athens

Per la vostra gioia, vi informo che ben tre dottorandi in filosofia della nostra università (ossia, io, Matteo Bianchetti e Chiara Brozzo) daranno un talk alla conferenza.

Tutte le info qui.

SCEPTICISM AND JUSTIFICATION CONFERENCE

Bologna December 17-18 2010

Scuola Superiore Studi Umanistici
Via Marsala 26, Bologna

*17-12-2010*

9.30-11.00 Ernest Sosa (Rutgers) "Why competences matter in
epistemology and elsewhere"
Discussant Andrea Sereni (San Raffaele)

11.30-13.00 Alan Millar (Stirling) "Scepticism and doxastic responsability"
Discussant Sara Neva (Bologna) & Wolfgang Huemer (Parma)

-Lunch-

15.00-16.30 Gianfranco Soldati (Fribourg) "On the justification of
demonstrative judgments"
Discussant Clotilde Calabi (Milan)

17.00-18.30 Ralph Wedgwood (Oxford) "A priori bootstrapping"
Discussant Giorgio Volpe (Bologna)

-Dinner at 20.00-

**18-12-2010**

9.30-11.00 Pascal Engel (Geneve) "Scepticism, assent and acceptance"
Discussant Delia Belleri (Bologna)

11.30-13.00 Annalisa Coliva (Modena& Reggio Emilia) "Varieties of
failure (of warrant transmission--what else?!)
Discussant Filippo Ferrari (Aberdeen)

-Lunch-

15.00-17.00 Jim Pryor (NYU) "Problems for credulism"
Discussant Eugenio Orlandelli (Bologna)

-Dinner at 20.00-

***Registration***

Attendance: free, but please register here:

Registration:
http://cogito.lagado.org/SkepticismJustification2010Registration